Enhanced Local Checks Requirements Reporting

Summary

Today, some plugins report that “Local Security Checks” are enabled. We are clarifying this term by changing it to "OS Security Patch Assessment" and providing more information about the requirements Nessus uses to evaluate the state of privileged scans.

Going forward the term "Local Checks" will refer to when a scan is able to gain privileged access to a target via authentication and execute commands. A new term will be used when local checks provide sufficient permissions and the right conditions are enabled on the target host to determine the patch level of operating system managed software. This will be called "OS Security Patch Assessment".

Four reporting plugins have had their script names clarified to use the new terminology and to clarify their differences. These are plugins that report on the success of privileged, or "host level" checks. 

Plugin Name Changes

• "Authentication Failure - Local Checks Not Run" will become "OS Security Patch Assessment Failed"
• "Local Checks Not Enabled (info)" will become "OS Security Patch Assessment Not Available"
• "Authentication Success - Local Checks Not Available" will become "OS Security Patch Assessment Checks Not Supported"
• "Local Checks Enabled" will become "OS Security Patch Assessment Available"

Impacts

Customers who filter scan results on vulnerability report text or plugin names as well as customers who have post scan processes that rely on these values may be affected by this change. Tenable recommends filtering on plugin IDs which do not change instead of plugin output or plugin names which can sometimes be adjusted.

Affected Plugins

• 12634 plugins/Settings/s/ssh_get_info.nasl
• 21745 plugins/Settings/h/hostlevel_check_failed.nasl
• 35705 plugins/Settings/s/start_registry_svc_failed.nasl
• 57033 plugins/Windows_Microsoft_Bulletins/m/ms_bulletin_checks_possible.nasl
• 97993 plugins/Misc/s/ssh_get_info2.nasl
• 110385 plugins/Settings/a/authenticated_hosts_insufficient_creds.nasl
• 110695 plugins/Settings/h/hostlevel_checks_unavailable.nasl

Estimated Release

7/12/2021

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Tenable Research Release Highlights are posted in advance of significant new releases or updates to existing plugins or audit files that are important for early customer notification.